Smoking Makes Your Hangover Worse

(IANS) If you had too many drinks on a night out, a pounding head and nausea will be all too familiar symptoms the morning after, but now scientists say your hangover could feel a whole lot worse if you smoke as well, the Daily Mail reported.

Lead author Damaris Rohsenow, Brown University in the US, said: "At the same number of drinks, people who smoke more that day are more likely to have a hangover and have more intense hangovers."

Her team controlled for other factors as well, such as whether students reported drug use in the past year. Smoking itself was linked to an increased risk of hangover compared with not smoking at all, the Mail said.

According to experts, tobacco smoke contains the chemical acetaldehyde which is also formed in your tissues when you drink alcohol and is responsible for many nasty hangover symptoms.

Rohsenow said other research has shown that nicotine receptors in the brain are involved in our subjective response to drinking. For example, smoking and drinking at the same time boosts the release of dopamine, a "feel-good" brain chemical.

So the fact that nicotine and alcohol are connected in the brain may explain why smoking is tied to hangovers.